Traversing the Tunnels

The streets aren’t safe anymore. Not since the event. I’m sure some places in the country suffered less, but chaos erupted throughout the city. Too much damage happened too quickly. Then, where there was a power vacuum, where chaos reigned ever so briefly, groups came to impose their own forms of order. Carved up the city into regions, each ruled over by a person or group who had the means to impose their will on the people there. Territory stretched as far as they could each control, some a small as a single building, some as large as an entire neighborhood. And none too welcoming of outsiders. I learned that the hard way, several times over.

My small shop sits on the outskirts of the city. Outside anyone’s so called “domain”. I never wanted much more than I had. The Event didn’t change that. I moved into my shop when some harsh man calling himself ‘The Overlord’ decided that my old apartment building was his personal territory. I moved out to my old workplace, set up a bit of a place for me to live there. Started cleaning up what whoever was behind the Event wrecked here. For a few years, it was perfect. No one bothered me, and I went about my life. Well, that changed a few months ago.

Someone entered through my entryway, setting off the chimes. Heading up to the booth, I saw a friendly looking couple. “Um, hello?” the man on the left asked. The booth isn’t particularly clear for people trying to see into it anymore. I made sure of that, to avoid the random wanderers getting a look at me. “I heard a rumor about you?” the man continued.

I went to the front of the booth and opened the small slot in the front of the booth. “Yes, and?” I asked.

The man on the left grew quiet. His partner got straight to the point. “We heard you could get us to the Bar without any trouble.” I didn’t answer, and she pressed. “We have some friends there, they’ll let us stay.”

I pulled on my simple balaclava. “Payment upfront. And don’t tell people about this, of course.”

The man approached the small slot to slide something through. “Right,” he begins, “I’m-”

I cut him off before he could get out whatever foolish thing he was trying to say. “I don’t care to know anything about you two, and preferably, we’ll never see one another after today.” I took the thing from his hand, through the slot. A can of beans. “I hope this isn’t the whole payment?”

The man started to say something, but wisely the woman stopped him and stepped in, verbally. “Of course not, but the car battery is too big to fit in that slot.” Clearly, she was the brains of this duo.

With a grunt of affirmation, I put the can down below the counter and headed out the other side, walking to the makeshift wall I’d constructed. Using my master key, I opened the side turnstile and the door for them. “This way,” I said brusquely, gesturing them through. The pair went through the unlocked stile. I followed them through, locking up behind myself. “The battery,” I said, holding out a hand expectantly.

The woman pulled it out of her bag and handed it over. “Here you go.”

Taking it from her hands, I told them, “Stay,” and headed back into the booth. First, I laid down the battery for later, then I closed and locked the slot, and finally I returned to the waiting couple. “Follow me, do everything I tell you to do, don’t touch anything I don’t, don’t make noise unless absolutely necessary, understood?” I locked the booth up.

“Yeah yeah,” the man said, clearly impatient.

I looked at him. “Break the rules, I’m going to come back here, and you are free to get yourselves lost.” Then, beckoning them to follow, I walked down the stairs that used to be an escalator and into the wrecked tunnels that have always run beneath the city. Collapsed as they were, most people forgot about the subway, and as long as I never cleared all the way to any stations, I was golden. I led them into the skinny pathways I’d cleared through the overwhelming rubble.

The Bar was near the center of the city. To many, it was seen as a gem in the middle of the destruction and oppression of the surrounding territories. Those people tended to be from elsewhere. While the bar itself served any who came and had the means to pay, the territory was enforced and ruled just as harshly as everywhere around. Not that I was about to tell these idiots that. They were going to get to the territory without any trouble. What happened after that, what they had to deal with, that was their problem. The man broke my rule rather quickly, of course. “If you don’t know our names, how are you going to tell us what to do, where to go, or whatever weird instructions you might have?” he whispered.

At least he was trying to be quiet, even if he was breaking the rule. I glared at him. “I’ll call you dumb,” gesturing towards the woman, “And dumber,” gesturing towards the man, “For willingly coming to the city from literally anywhere else in the world. Now, silence.” This time, I hoped they’d listen. We were starting to approach the first set of territories we’d be passing through, and I’d prefer them not to hear voices coming up from beneath.

The walk was not a short one. In the days before the Event, it would likely have been a half hour or so subway ride. Walking it through the tunnels, it was going to be a four hour affair. It could be made closer to three and a half, but crossing the river at any point above ground was a death sentence and even if Dumb and Dumber annoyed me, I wasn’t about to lead them to that fate. That meant taking a less straightforward route, then looping back. And, as long as they followed the rules, they would be fine.

They did for the most part. Three and a quarter or so hours later, we reached the side exit. A sloped tunnel leading into a basement. Right in the middle of Scourge and her gang’s territory. Holding my hand silently up, I scurried up the ramp on my stomach. If this wasn’t clear, the next exit was deeper inside Scourge’s borders, where people patrolled less often. Easier exit, but more travel through her territory, so more risk. Crawling my way up, I slowly pushed the carpet-covered palette up with my shoulders and scanned the basement for dangers. It was clear. Sliding through the gap, I walked over to the stairs and looked up them into the early evening sky. Clouds gathered. Rain was coming. Best make this trek as fast as possible. Returning to the palette, I pushed it open only to find both of them there. They hadn’t listened to me. They broke one of my rules. I sighed. “It’s clear,” I whispered. I then gestured to the west northwest. “It’s a mile that way. You can find the rest of the way yourselves.”

“What?” the woman whispered aggressively.

“And you said you’d listen when I told you to do things. Like wait.” I help them out of the hole.

The man shoved the woman. “I told you,” he whispered.

I sighed quietly. “Want some advice? Stick to the backroads and ruined areas. Check both ways and rooftops before crossing any street, and if you get spotted, run and hope you can make the border before they catch up to you. The Scourge’s forces are slightly insane, but they know better than crossover into the Bar territory.” With that, I started to lower myself into the hole.

The woman looked at me, confused. “If you want to help us, why not just lead us the rest of the way?” she murmured.

I smiled and shook my head. “Everyone’s got to live by their word. If you go back on it, even a bit, even for a good cause, what does that make you? If you don’t stick to your word, how can people trust you? How can you trust yourself?”

The pair looked confused at me, then one another, then back at me. With a subtle wave, I pulled the palette back atop the hole. I was fairly certain they’ll be fine. The woman, at least, had a brain on her. They were going to make it to the border, I figured. Whether they managed to stay in Bar territory or not, that… Well, that didn’t matter. I would never see them again, after all.

On the way back, it started to rain, as I had predicted. That meant my casual walk through the already dank tunnels quickly became a slog. Water from the rain fell through the cracks, the holes, the rocks. Beyond the dripping, which was enough to drive some insane, there was the puddles. Every so often, the bit of tunnel I’d cleared hit the middle of the old subway areas, a low, relatively flat point. And every one of those places became a puddle for weeks after every rain. My feet got soaked. Halfway back, I decided to pop up topside. I figured, I was in the area, and if I had to deal with that monotonously echoing drip much longer at the moment, I might’ve gone insane. So, I turned off the route back to my home, and swung over towards the Comish’s territory. I needed more food, in case no one came by in the next month. I hated rationing, after all. And there were few places with their food less on lock than the Comish’s zone. See, they had enough production and open space for crops and some animals, so they didn’t need to worry about food. Not as much as the rest of us, in any case. So the occasional backpack of goods disappearing didn’t bother them. Heck, I’m not even sure they noticed. I checked for ‘cops’ as I crawled into, then immediately out of, the sewers right next to the Comish’s homebase. Almost never did anyone check this deep inside their own borders, but it paid to be safe.

No one was waiting for me, and slipping into the kitchen was easy enough. There was a pair of rainboots in the door. I headed into the walk-in freezer and grabbed some of the preserved meat off of the shelves, shoving as much as I could into my backpack. Checking before I left, I put the boots on and returned to my tunnels beneath the city. With food in my pack and rainboots on my feet, the walk back was much easier than before. No worry about food, no discomfort from the puddles. The walk was quite relaxing, too. Nothing like collapsed stone and dark, wet tunnels to brighten up a day. With food in my bag, the dripping even started to be less of an annoyance. Almost a rhythm to keep my pace matched to. And I managed to keep pace well, too. I never timed it exactly, but it likely cut a solid five, ten minutes off of my walk back.

I made it back up the stairs to my booth, predictably, no one seemed to be waiting there. After all, only idiots willingly tried to enter the city. Unlocking my booth and locking it behind me, I peeled the balaclava off my head, tossing it onto the counter. I picked up the canned beans and the car battery, and headed over to my living area. First, I put the battery with the other twenty spares. I used three at a time, and unlike a lot of resources, I had yet to find a way to recycle or refill them. I needed as many as possible.

Next, I put the meat from my backpack in my freezer-box. Ideally, it hadn’t gotten thawed during the walk, but even if it had, I hoped the refreeze would be fast enough to keep things from breaking down too much. Finally, I placed the single can of beans the couple had used to get into the tunnels with my other non-perishables. About a month’s supply, give or take. Taking a bit of older meat out of my freezer, I slapped it onto my pan and turned on the burner. It was about time for dinner.